DESIGN OF MANUFACTURING CELLS FOR FLEXIBLE ENVIRONMENT CONSIDERING ALTERNATIVE ROUTEING

In flexible manufacturing system (FMS), it is common that most machine s are multi-purpose and are capable of performing more than one operat ion, which makes parts rerouteing possible. In addition, due to schedu ling constraints, re-routeing is often desirable. Also, interruptions in production activity due to machines failure from time to time is a common problem, and that too requires parts rerouteing to meet the due -date requirements. Historically, machine grouping procedures do not c onsider alternative routeings that a part may undergo during the opera tional phase of the system. When a part is rerouted, it adversely affe cts the cell performance. The existing procedures for machine cells fo rmation in cellular manufacturing have not taken these factors into co nsideration. In this research, a new heuristic procedure is developed which provides the flexibility of incorporating alternative routeings in the system's design phase itself. To illustrate the validity of thi s heuristic, a case example problem is developed using a manufacturing planning software (MANUPLAN) from General Dynamics. The results confi rmed that the proposed heuristic procedure outperforms other existing methods.